We usually respond with  with three or four criteria such as vend price, but the one thing that we always include is location. The specific location of your vending machine is a critical element in the equation because it affects what is being sold, the volume, the risk for vandalism, and what types of payment are most prevalent. Here are just a few examples:

1)      Hospitals — in many cases, hospital employees are not permitted to carry cash so a contactless or credit card reader would be essential in machines located in and around the hospital. Where an outside connection cannot be guaranteed, often times in areas adjacent to X-ray rooms, bill recycling is an alternative payment technology an operator should consider.

2)      Airports – In locations filled with predominantly transient customers such as airports may require a bill recycler and card reader/cash acceptor combo to enable all forms of payment.

3)      Amusement Parks – in places where the vend price is typically above average, a credit card reader may be important for convenience and sales lift. Operators report excellent sales results using bill recycling as well.  Combining cashless and bill recycling would ensure vend patrons can always pay for these higher margin drinks.

4)      Hotels – Oftentimes, hotels are at high risk of theft so carrying a large float in vending machines on empty floors poses too high of a temptation for vandalism. In this case, going completely cashless may make the most sense.

Here are two different contactless technology options:
1) RFID – with this method, a RFID sticker is applied directly to the mobile device, and can be waved in front of the contactless payment bezel just like a contactless card.
2) Application – with this alternative method, an application is downloaded to the phone that enables the contactless payment through the cloud. This is the less expensive, more convenient method but one that is most foreign to consumers.

The question remains: will consumers accept either method as secure? Only time will tell. To hear more on this topic, tune in to VendingMarketWatch.com’s latest AudioConnect podcast, “MEI’s Bob Martin Examines Vending Payment Options” http://www.vendingmarketwatch.com/podcast/ or Ask the Experts here at MEI.

1) Vend price – the higher the vend price, the more important it is that the machine accept cashless payments or include recycling technology that can accept high denomination bills.

2) Location – the more transient the customer base (eg: airports and theme parks) the more important it is that the machine accept cashless payments or include recycling technology.

3) Clientele – The more customers who don’t have the ability to carry wallets, the more important it is that the machine accept alternate payment methods.

To hear more on this topic, tune in to VendingMarketWatch.com’s latest AudioConnect podcast, “MEI’s Bob Martin Examines Vending Payment Options”  or Ask the Experts here at MEI.

You have to begin by enabling Dex in your machines.  A few companies including MEI offer a retrofit box, costing $200-$300. Once you’ve done that, you’ve got to understand what alarms your machines can send out.  Not every vending machine throws out alarms, and many such as snack machines throw out very few alarms.  Typically machines with compressors for cold or frozen applications throw off the important alarms related to whether the compressor stopped working.

Curbside polling can tell you what the machine needs but that requires an investment in software to take the sales data from the machine and compare it to what’s in the machine by spiral to know what to bring in.  Again, MEI has this software which we call EASITRAX.  

So you can see there is some preliminary work to do to get ‘set up’. We have experts to help you work thru that process so don’t feel that you would be expected to understand all this from the start.  To get started, tell me a little more about your business in terms of number of machines you service, are they primarily snack and soda, do you want to monitor all of them or just in certain locations, etc….

Much of this new technology lies in the telemetry arena, enabling the use of credit cards and closed payment systems, along with alarm management and dynamic scheduling applications.  While there is a significant upside to having telemetry in your machines, until now, once you choose a vendor for dynamic scheduling or alarm management, you’re effectively locked in.

The problem of being locked into one vendor with limited options has had some adverse effects on the effectiveness of telemetry in the vending community:

•    What happens when one vendor comes out with the feature of the year?  If you’re not with that vendor, before now, you would have been out of luck.
•    One telemetry provider offers cashless functionality and another has a dynamic scheduling application that meets your needs.  Earlier this year, one or the other but not both.
•    You purchase another operator’s business and acquire their telemetry solution, and hope they utilized the same telemetry provider.  Otherwise, the telemetry equipment wasn’t worth anything.

As you can see, this situation doesn’t benefit anyone — operators are unable to realize the full potential of telemetry equipment, and selection is limited due to the lack of interoperability between telemetry equipment.

In the early part of 2009, NAMA formed a committee to address this problem, and a significant number of telemetry providers stepped up to assist in development and become early adopters of the Vending Data Interchange (VDI) standards.  Through months of hard work by the members of the VDI committee, and a commitment to deliver a workable solution back to the industry by NAMA ’09, the NAMA VDI standards Version 1.0 is being released.

This standard will enable telemeters from different manufacturers to communicate with other service providers.  As an early adopter of the VDI specification, MEI will be able to integrate the RDP into other dynamic scheduling software, allowing our customers to take advantage of the MEI RDP, the combo bezel and cashless, while utilizing another dynamic scheduling application.

In order to remotely monitor 1 or more vending machines, you’ll need an MEI telemeter in each machine.  MEI is unique in only requiring 1 of the machines to use a cellular modem to call out with all the others networked to talk to the one machine calling out.  You can set the type of alarms you want to monitor and whether you want the machines to call out at a set time or as soon as an alarm is triggered.

Curbside Polling and Dynamic Scheduling represent two types of wireless data communication with vending machines. Curbside polling is based on local area network (LAN) wireless communication from a properly equipped vending machine to the delivery vehicle equipped with a compatible LAN radio in close proximity to each other (usually not more than a couple of hundred yards). The absence of “air time” charges with this type of communication protocol makes it a very attractive, cost effective way of getting the freshest data possible about the replenishment status of a vending machine prior to leaving the delivery vehicle.   

Dynamic Scheduling is based on wide area network (WAN) wireless communication with appropriately equipped vending machines and promises a significant change in the machine replenishment process. 

So incorporate into your sales and operations strategy the use of telemetry to not only save your business ‘green’ cash, but help differentiate your company as recognizing the importance of going ‘green’ for your customers.